San Francisco - Spring Collection

[simms3]

Recent photos of my neighborhood in SF and other areas of the city, as well. Almost all photos are from Sunday evening stroll on June 1 (including views from my apt roof and an apt roof of a friend's in the Mission). I have quite a vast collection of photos of the city that haven't been posted, but decided to get some on here as my computer recently crashed and what better place to store photos than online!


My neighborhood, where Russian Hill meets Nob Hill meets Pacific Heights meets Polk Gulch.


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View up to Nob Hill

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View up to Russian Hill

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My neighborhood's main commercial drag looking north

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Looking over to the beginning of Pacific Heights

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Nob Hill from the west

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Russian Hill from the west

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Typical year-round street scene of café combined with neighborhood grocery and outdoor seating.  This place sells half pints of ice cream for $10.89, though its sandwiches are a much better deal!

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One of several neighborhood grocers along Polk St

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Fancy Russian Hill Penthouse presumably owned by a local wealthy NIMBY who would never want to see another tower built in the area

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Typical Nob Hill/Russian Hill residential street

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Side street in Polk Gulch

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Typical Polk Gulch

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Typical "Tendernob" (i.e. Nob Hill and Tenderloin meet)

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Polk Gulch/Tendernob looking up to Cathedral Hill to the west

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Looking down Geary St I believe

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The always fun Phoenix Hotel in the middle of the 'Loin/Civic Center area.  This will always be here.  Sight of pool parties, celebrity sightings, and awkward motel design plopped right into the middle of the city.

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The doorman.

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Civic Center area with bulk of city's City Beautiful/Institutional Beaux Arts architecture amongst all the government/civic buildings.

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Community garden

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Looking west to NoPa

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Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

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Typical Civic Center building...civic in nature of course

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Twitter Alley – in between 2 buildings that serve as Twitter's HQ, shops/uses coming soon

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SoMa side street

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A scene from the SoMa neighborhood of SF

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Quiet Sunday evening on New Montgomery St near the city's Financial District

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Quiet Sunday evening on Second St near the city's Financial District

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A loft building in South Beach neighborhood.

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This neighborhood is usually bustling, especially on Giants game days and weekdays, however, area residents enjoy peace and quiet on a Sunday evening.

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Mission Bay construction across the China Basin...a whole new city built from scratch!

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Transferring to the southeastern section of the city – the Mission/Dolores Heights/Noe and Eureka Valley...that's the newer construction of the Mission Dolores, with the original next to it.

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SF General with new addition

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Looking up to Upper Market St

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Looking up to Cathedral Hill, with the cathedral shrouded in fog, of course.

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Wisps of fog float between SF's two tallest buildings.

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Looking down to Rincon Hill and some construction

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Karl!

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EARLY MAY STROLL

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New construction next to old.  Minimalist design by Stanley Saitowitz

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Hotel Vertigo...

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A bit of Georgian architecture on the west coast, of course with some Queen Anne influence.

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Typical scene from central core of the city


LATE APRIL STROLL

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New construction in my neighborhood.  SF can be modern and classy, too!

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Pac Heights density

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[thelakelander]

Great pics. Great looking city. Thanks for sharing. So is it safe to assume you prefer San Francisco to Atlanta?

[Karenfinan]

I moved to the Bay area 18 months ago- I live in Alameda, and work in downtown Oakland ...I don't know SF as well as Oakland, but the whole Bay Area is on fire now...I am very happy to be here , and I'm enjoying so many things here, and getting to know the area. Southern GA and Jax will always be home, though.

[simms3]

Great pics. Great looking city. Thanks for sharing. So is it safe to assume you prefer San Francisco to Atlanta?

I can't imagine anyone saying otherwise?  Just because I talked about Atlanta when I lived there doesn't mean I don't think there are better cities out there.  I still think Atlanta is a shining example for a city like Jacksonville.  For a new south, still sprawling city, it's playing its cards mostly right.  Jacksonville would be *wise* to follow in its path.  SF is a great city, basically world class, but is on such a different playing field there are not nearly as many takeaways or directly comparable scenarios that would relate to Jax.  It's much more difficult for me to say "but here in SF we are doing X, Y, and X".  I do think the one shared example would be SF's decisions regarding the Transbay Terminal development lots and some SF Port shipyards property as it relates to what Jax can do procedurally and incrementally with The Shipyards.

[thelakelander]

What is SF doing with their shipyards property?

[BridgeTroll]

Thanks for the pix... makes me a bit homesick.  Lived in San Jose for 10 years and spent many weekends in SF.   

Sooo many parking meters and one way streets... how un progressive! 

[simms3]

What is SF doing with their shipyards property?

Hard to answer in a short post.  Unfortunately because our city governance is by ballot initiative and we seem to be voting every few months around here on every little miniscule thing, a voter referendum just ensured that any height limit or zoning change from what was in place as of 1/1/2014 for any Port of San Francisco owned or controlled property would be put to ballot.  So Forest City's "Pier 70" plans are in jeopardy, as are the Giants'/Strata's Mission Rock plans.  The Warriors already gave up on Pier 32 and bought non Port of SF land down in Mission Bay, scrapping what was an AWESOME Snøhetta design for that pier and mid-rise (10-20 stories) office/hotel/retail across the street.

So we have *that* very public battle with the craziest NIMBYs in the world (that's completely undisputable).  But people's plans for Shipyards sites are generally great and involve a lot of public uses.

Conversely, on a former Oakland shipyards site, a Chinese company is backing a $1.5B development there, which has broken ground.  I've highlighted it below:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=18672.15

And I thought I started a thread that directly compared the Shipyards to the Brooklyn Basin referenced above, but can't find it.  Similar size, scale, etc.

What I do think is a major takeaway from SF that I have referenced in my posts here on MJ is incrementally parceling and selling off land to different developers.  The city here created a master plan for an area, new zoning for that area, and then sold off the different pieces of land to different developers (issuing RFPs for each piece) in order to fund the new Transbay Terminal construction.  As a result, the city's tallest is UC now.

Sooo many parking meters and one way streets... how un progressive! 

Yes, which is why I could care less about "two-waying" streets to create a pedestrian friendly environment (I think that's way more "small town" than big city, as every major city is mostly 1-way), and parking meters?  Every major city has to deal with them.  I got soooo many tickets in Atl when I lived there with a car.  I don't have a car in SF, but I see the meter maids all over the city.  The other thing people have to contend with around here (like NYC and Boston, kind of unique to these 3 cities) is street sweeper schedules.  There is a whole culture of people moving cars around here and shuffling them around to avoid the sweepers (much larger ticket...or towed, and here it's a minimum of ~$500-600 to get your car out of a lot IF you even show up within a couple hours).

I realize Jax needs to take baby steps and slowly and carefully get people to come there, sort of like trying to get a squirrel to eat a nut out of your hand, so it's different.  But there are more impactful things imo than two-waying streets.  Meter elimination in Jax could be impactful.  People down there don't want to pay for anything, let alone a meter.

[BridgeTroll]

I forgot to ask... what is with the pink / pink striped lanes on some of the streets.  That must be relatively new... Bus / bike lanes??

[simms3]

Well that's Geary...which has the world's busiest bus line, so that might be a bus marker and they are going to switch it to BRT (we all are clamoring for a BART heavy rail line, but besides the point).  But most streets have bike lanes that are like that.  See more photos of another being put in on my street (the photos are from the opposite end to where I live, but will make their way north to where I reside):

[jaxinatl]

lol bridge troll...I liked your comment about parking meters and one way streets...  I was there three years ago and even saw a lot of homeless yet SF is a thriving city. People in JAx just make up all these "issues" as to why people dont go downtown. Every big thriving city has all those same problems and yet seem to progress anyhow.

[BridgeTroll]

lol bridge troll...I liked your comment about parking meters and one way streets...  I was there three years ago and even saw a lot of homeless yet SF is a thriving city. People in JAx just make up all these "issues" as to why people dont go downtown. Every big thriving city has all those same problems and yet seem to progress anyhow.

Exactly!